Setting up a website in Singapore is actually quite easy. All you have to do is pick a host that is reliable, reputable, and performs well in that region because speed is important, and the lack of speed directly translates to loss of sales.
Sounds simple enough right?
Nope.
Choosing the best web hosting sites in Singapore might just be the most difficult choice we’ve ever had to make when we decided to set up a website right here in Lion City. There’s just so many providers and options to choose from, and they’re all pretty damn good!
So in order to help you guys pick the best web host in Singapore, we decided to roll up our sleeves, get down and dirty, and delve deep into the world of web hosting in Singapore.
Best Web Hosting Singapore
Final Thoughts
Just pick the cheapest one and run with it! It’s just a website, who cares right?
WRONG!
Selecting the wrong web host can be downright detrimental to your business and web presence. A webhost is like a foundation to a building – without the right base, everything is eventually gonna fall apart. Ideally, you’ll want your foundation to be strong, fast and reliable.
Let’s have a look at the factors and features every good web host should have.
In order for us to rank and review the web hosts fairly, we purchased their hosting plans and set up test sites for each of the web hosts, testing them for uptime, customer support, and most importantly, server speed.
We made sure that our test sites were physically hosted on the companies’ Singaporean datacenters, so that we could run our server speed test on all 5 brands using the same parameters.
Using Bitcatcha’s very own Server Speed Checker, we sent pings from 8 different locations around the world, measuring the time it takes for the servers to respond to each one of those pings. We then rank the web hosts from A to D, depending on how well they perform against Google’s recommended response time of 200 ms (If their response time is below 200 ms, they’ll be ranked A).
This is actually quite important because if you pick a host with slow response times, it’ll take longer for your site to load up, causing your customers to lose interest, which loses you the sale.
Fun fact – Amazon could lose up to 1.6 Billion USD per year if their site is slowed by just one second!
Okay, so we’ve rambled on long enough about our boring testing methods and guidelines, so let’s have a look at our test results starting with our favourite host, SiteGround!
A+
56 ms
9.70/mo
Out of the 4 website hosts featured, SiteGround is the most reputable, known internationally for their excellent customer service.
They’ll respond to any of your issues quickly, and they are a tremendously knowledgeable bunch. If you ask nicely, they’ll even tell you where to find the best chilli crab in Singapore (OKAY I’M KIDDING!).
Our problems were solved without transferring us to different departments, saving us the hassle of repeating our issues over and over again until somebody can help us, which is a major time saver.
Feature wise, we were surprised to find that SiteGround gave us the best bang for buck, especially when they’re the biggest brand out there:
All for a super affordable low-low price of SGD8 a month (I eat snacks more expensive than that!).
Throw in additional perks like their ready-to-use caching system and their SuperCacher, and SiteGround has a clear advantage over the rest.
When we put the host through our unique server speed checker, SiteGround produced phenomenal results, with a worldwide average ranking of 159.9 ms, and an average of 56 ms in Sydney, Singapore and Japan!
For the benefit of our readers who don’t understand what these numbers mean – It’s blazing fast!
We monitor SiteGround closely as we are hosting with them. Check out our in-depth review for everything you need to know about SiteGround (Our test sites, server speed test, term, etc).
A+
74 ms
14.99/mo
When someone talks about local Singaporean web hosting, the one brand that always come to mind is Exabytes.
Established way back in 2001, Exabytes is the oldest player out of the 5. Over the years, they’ve established a strong presence in the market, forging relationships and connecting with their customers. Some of our friends swear by them, having used their service for over ten years. So, with their reputation as a ‘big brother’ in the industry, we couldn’t wait to see how they fare when compared against the other big boys.
Speedwise, Exabytes performed quite well. They produced a worldwide average of 173.9 ms on our server speed checker with an average of 74 ms in Singapore, Sydney and Japan. They are definitely on par with the international player.
Looking at the features and benefits, Exabytes is the Exabest.
Everything that you need to build a website, they sell. It’s essentially a one-stop shop for site building and hosting. They also tick all the right boxes and have all the required features (which may not be as exciting as the competitors, but they’re still pretty decent). Let’s have a look at the list:
As mentioned their features may not be as strong as the competitors, but Exabytes makes up for it in terms of convenience – everything I need is right on their site, I don’t have to look for a separate site builder.
There’s only one drawback though – the price. Exabytes offers the same features as their international counterparts… but only with their premium Ebiz Lite Pro plan, which costs SGD14.99 per month. My personal opinion, It’s a little on the high side, and I wouldn’t be able to justify the cost.
A+
89 ms
5.08/mo
This little Lithuanian web hosting company made waves internationally with their exceptionally low introductory price and stellar services.
Upon discovering that they’ve got a data center in Singapore, we decided to create a test site with them to see how they fare against the best of the best web hosting companies around.
After doing some testing, we decided that they deserve a spot on the big boy’s table here on this list. Hostinger Singapore definitely doesn’t disappoint.
Their Singapore server did quite well in our server response time test, with a worldwide average of 153.8 ms, and 66.6 ms in Singapore, Sydney and Japan, but that’s already expected, being an international web host and all.
What really impressed us was the amount of value we got at their irresistibly low price point. Our Premium Shared plan only cost SGD 2.90 per month (with a 48-month subscription) (SGD 5.08 per month for 12-month subscription) and the number of features we received with it felt almost criminal.
We got almost all of the same benefits of the premium web hosting counterparts, namely:
These are just a few of the features we received (if you wanna see what the full list is, check out our full review over here), but the icing on this very beautiful cake is that Hostinger provides their premium shared users with 1 free domain name! It’s a small gesture that really has a big impact, especially for beginner business owners who are worried about snowballing start-up costs.
We feel that Hostinger really cares for their customers because of how they structure and train their support team. Their support widget can be easily found on the bottom right of their dashboard, which eases frustration because who wants to hunt for the damn link to the live chat when something goes wrong with our websites?
They’ve got 4 support centers, serving 20 countries in their local languages (with plans to add on more) to make communications easier, and they’re really knowledgeable and super helpful. They don’t mind holding your hand and guiding to step-by-step to fix your website woes, no matter how silly they may be.
Needless to say, we really like Hostinger. They’re not the best around, but they’re the best for beginner business owners.
Hostinger In Action
A+
71 ms
6.61/mo
A2 Hosting is an international web hosting provider, and their services are expected to meet a certain international level of standards. We’re very happy to say that from our experience, A2 Hosting easily surpasses our expectations.
When we ran our server speed test on A2 Hosting, we didn’t expect much from them but we were pleasantly surprised at the results – A worldwide average of 173.2 ms, and an average of 71.3 ms in Singapore, Sydney and Japan.
On paper, their numbers may not perform as well as our #1 host SiteGround, but at speeds under 200 ms, loading up your page is practically instantaneous! We also appreciate the fact that we didn’t encounter any issues whatsoever, and we think that they are pretty damn reliable.
Let’s talk features!
Their A2-Optimised feature is swell and it works really well with different CMS. Their proprietary tech also gets along really well with WordPress, Joomla, Magento and others, pushing the system to give you the fastest speed possible at all times!
Now, take in everything you’ve read about A2 hosting, all the features, the speed, everything – how much would you pay for service like this?
SGD15 a month?
SGD 20?
Naaaah.
This package will only cost you a mere SGD6.61 a month. That’s less than a Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccino!
The only thing we had to complain about (and really, we’re nitpicking here) is the speed of the live chat. It look us longer than usual to connect to someone, but once we did, we found their support staff to be very experienced and helpful. So yeah, live chat is a little slow to respond but when it comes to speed and reliability, we can safely say that A2 Hosting is A-Okay.
A2 Hosting In Action
A+
70 ms
50.00/mo
Next, we tested one of Singapore’s finest, combed through their features and sweet talked their customer service team, just to help you decide which host to go with.
Surprisingly, for a brand as prominent as them, their customer service is…to put it in milder terms, not great. It took them 12 hours to respond to an issue we encountered while setting up the test site. 12 hours! That’s 3 and a half days in dog years! Fortunately, when they DID respond, the issue was resolved quickly and professionally.
Feature-wise, Vodien did quite well.
Not bad right? Everything seems comparable to SiteGround so far. Everything except for the price. You see, for us to get an accurate apple-to-apple comparison data, we had to use Vodien’s bizValue plan.
In other words, this is their super expensive, premium package, which costs a whopping SGD50 a month. I don’t know about you guys, but to me, that’s seems mighty expensive.
Thankfully, Vodien seems to justify their prices when it comes to server speed. With a worldwide average ranking of 177.6 ms and 70.4 ms in Sydney, Japan and Singapore, you know that your customers aren’t waiting long to load up your site.
Numbers-wise, they are slightly slower compared to the other 4 hosts above but at anything below 200 ms, you won’t be able to tell the difference.
We had a lovely time reviewing these 5 brands, but it also made it super difficult for us to pick a winner.
Statistically speaking, all 5 of them performed well – some better than others on paper but not enough to really make a difference in real-world applications.
It boils down to a matter of preference (some people might prefer local Singaporean hosts, some might prefer international ones) because each one of these brands are excellent, with impressive features and numbers to back them up.
However, the main deciding factor for us would be the pricing. SiteGround, Hostinger and A2 Hosting gave us everything we needed with their entry-level packages, which costs below SGD10 per month.
The local brands could compete, but only with their premium packages which can cost up to SGD50 per month.
Their entry level packages come with only HDD storage options, which isn’t ideal especially as we’re dealing with speed and load times. They also seem to lack 24/7 support, something which is quite important to us.
Hostinger seemingly came out of nowhere, with their amazing speeds, benefits and support at their really low introductory price. They’re missing certain features but we still think they’re the best bet for those that are just starting out.
So due to their price, speed and excellent customer support, I’d have to say that SiteGround is the best web hosting in Singapore for us, but if you prefer to go with any of the other brands, you needn’t be concerned – they all perform really well locally and internationally, as justified by our server speed checker.
All of them performing better than Google’s recommended 200 ms, which means their awesome rating is 10/10!
To recap, here is our top Singapore host:-
We hope that this article helped you in deciding on a web host. Drop us a line if you have any questions!
